Street Without a Name
Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria
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Narrated by:
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Emily Gray
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By:
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Kapka Kassabova
About this listen
Kassabova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and grew up under the drab, muddy, gray mantle of one of communism’s most mindlessly authoritarian regimes. Escaping with her family as soon as possible after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, she lived in Britain, New Zealand, and Argentina, and several other places. But when Bulgaria was formally inducted to the European Union she decided it was time to return to the home she had spent most of her life trying to escape. What she found was a country languishing under the strain of transition. This two-part memoir of Kapka’s childhood and return explains life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
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Editorial reviews
Poet and essayist Kapka Kassabova reveals glimpses from behind the Iron Curtain in Street Without a Name. As a teenager, Kassabova left Bulgaria for New Zealand and later the United Kingdom. In her memoir, she writes not only about her Communist-era childhood but her decision to return to her home country as an adult.
Kassabova recalls growing up in a crumbling communist apartment block and her struggles learning Russian. Returning to the post-Communist country, she sees a new element of lawlessness. Through her personal experiences, we see distilled a country’s essence and the enormous changes it’s experienced in the last half century. Narrator Emily Gray offers a rueful performance, with a British accent, about one woman’s search for her cultural identity.Related to this topic
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- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man 20 years her senior. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints - victim, perpetrator, and witness - Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
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One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
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Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
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Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
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Murder in Matera
- A True Story of Passion, Family, and Forgiveness in Southern Italy
- By: Helene Stapinski
- Narrated by: Helene Stapinski
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Since childhood Helene Stapinski heard lurid tales about her great-great-grandmother, Vita. In Southern Italy she was a loose woman who had murdered someone. Immigrating to America with three children, she lost one along the way. Helene's youthful obsession with Vita deepened as she grew up, eventually propelling the journalist to Italy, where, with her own children in tow, she pursued the story, determined to set the record straight.
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Interesting story about unraveling the family lore
- By Denise Sproed on 08-04-17
By: Helene Stapinski
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On Hitler's Mountain
- Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
- By: Irmgard A. Hunt
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
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A rare and very much appreciated perspective.
- By tabounds on 12-28-17
By: Irmgard A. Hunt
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
- A Memoir of Africa
- By: Peter Godwin
- Narrated by: Peter Godwin
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.
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Worth the listen.
- By SEE on 09-06-21
By: Peter Godwin
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The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
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Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
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Nothing to Envy
- Ordinary Lives in North Korea
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
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The man who wants to be GOD
- By Gohar on 05-08-10
By: Barbara Demick
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Street of Eternal Happiness
- Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road
- By: Rob Schmitz
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace's Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city's sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies.
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Deserving of better audio
- By Rachael on 02-19-18
By: Rob Schmitz
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Good Muslim Boy
- By: Osamah Sami
- Narrated by: Osamah Sami, David Tredinnick
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Osamah Sami: a schemer, a dreamer and a madcap antihero of spectacular proportions whose terrible life choices keep leading to cataclysmic consequences...despite his best laid plans to be a good Muslim boy. By the age of 13, Osamah had survived the Iran-Iraq war, peddled fireworks and chewing gum on the Iranian black market, proposed 'temporary marriage' not once but three times, and received countless floggings from the Piety Police....
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Funny, heartwarming and one of the best
- By Sylvia Green on 07-26-17
By: Osamah Sami
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Maya's Notebook
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Maria Cabezas
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Neglected by her parents, 19-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up in Berkeley with her grandparents. Her grandmother Nini is a force of nature, a woman whose formidable strength helped her build a new life after emigrating from Chile in 1973. Popo, Maya's grandfather, is a gentle man whose solid, comforting presence helps calm the turbulence of Maya's adolescence. When Popo dies of cancer, Maya goes completely off the rails, turning to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime in a downward spiral that eventually bottoms out in Las Vegas.
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Narrator ruins this book
- By R.J. Mulder on 05-13-14
By: Isabel Allende
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The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
What listeners say about Street Without a Name
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Gabriela
- 06-27-21
A life remembered and told eloquently
Real life. Real emotions. Story, poetry, narration, all done well. Would recommend to anyone interested in other people's perspectives.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-17-23
Absolutely Enchanting real life adventure
Based on the author's personal experience growing up in brutal Bulgarian socialism and her several returns to tour the post communist country years later, this honest tail is both whimsical and heart wrenching as we learn how much it hurts to be adrift from your past, even when that past is filled with horrifying and painful memories.
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- LaChelle Hunt
- 06-26-23
Great Info
I worked in Bulgaria making a film back in 2017 and I didn’t know much about the country. So it was good to listen to how she grew up there and also modern day Bulgarian struggles.
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- Joseph Jacob
- 09-19-16
Very revealing of life behind iron curtain
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
Very revealing of life behind iron curtain. These things you need to know. Be prepared though; some of the recalled events will break your heart.
What aspect of Emily Gray’s performance would you have changed?
She's not the best ready. Didn't do very well with voices of different characters.
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- Delyan D. Kovachev
- 06-26-17
This book took me back in time
Good book. I found many of the stories from post communist Bulgaria painfully familiar especially the ones with the family members.
The communist system produced a few lost generations of confused souls with stories that are difficult to explain to somebody coming from a free world.
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- Kay S.
- 05-29-21
Excellent!
This is a combination personal story and travel guide. Tells about author's life under communist rule and gives wonder guide to Bulgarian history and tourist destinations. Covered everything spoken about on travel websites but in an easy to read fashion. The narration is impeccable. There is a bit of jumping back and forth between her solo travels and a trip she took with a friend. Just need to pay attention. Author also covers unpleasant topics without using profanity or too much graphic detail.
Would definitely recommend for anyone planning to visit Bulgaria or anyone just interested in knowing more about this interesting country.
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- Giselle
- 11-02-21
Good start, but ended up not liking the author
This book started out great, as the author took us through rich descriptions of her childhood experiences during communism in Bulgaria. But when she describes her adult experiences visiting Bulgaria, she seems to view the people without much sympathy or attempt at understanding them. What else would you expect from someone who feels the need to inform religious people she meets that she is an atheist. I’d rather hear their points of view, not her self-satisfied statements. She proudly tells us that she is “polygamous with religion” (or some such phrasing), which only means to me she has only a superficial understanding of religion in general. She also unnecessarily declares to a stranger that she and her partner don’t feel a need to get married; it’s telling to me that she tells this to a jovial old man who is supportive of her views - and is at least mentally unfaithful to his wife. One of the most annoying things was her travels with a guy who, together, they make fun of some local uneducated people... she describes laughing and making fun of the things they said and did, in their presence! I do not want to hear an account of real people from a very unsympathetic author. Something else I thought egregious but unsurprising: she describes a conversation with a woman who had been a “labor camp baby”, I think she called her: the woman had been a baby in the camps, and had been thrown into a bucket of water to be drowned by a guard (taken out of her helpless mother’s arms), then to be rescued and grow up in the horrors of the camps. I can’t even fathom how that would shape a person. Then, after telling her experience (in a way the author almost seems to poke fun at) the woman changes the subject and says she doesn’t believe the Holocaust happened. The author, who doesn't have much introspection it seems, proudly informs us that she launched into a tirade against the woman about her uneducated evil views, or however she put it. There is no journalistic interest or open-minded empathy in trying to understand why the woman feels that way, what led her to that conclusion, or even trying to understand how a childhood of forced labor and hunger might shape who she is. Instead, the author storms off to another carriage on the train with the words, “I’m done sympathizing for one day” or something like that.
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2 people found this helpful